Creepy Ad Watch

"Dear Jew: You are entering a dangerous place. Shield your eyes." That’s the Hebrew-language text on a huge billboard that an Orthodox group has paid to post alongside a Brooklyn highway. The "dangerous place" is Manhattan. The danger isn’t specified, but it’s clear they’re not talking about muggings.

Presumably directed at ultra-Orthodox Jews traveling to Manhattan for work, the billboard puts a stark spin on the new study out yesterday from the UJA-Federation of New York, which raised the possibility of an impending Orthodox majority among New York Jews. New York’s Orthodox Jews and non-Orthodox Jews exist in separate, parallel worlds. In the broadest terms, each group has its own borough. Brooklyn Jews are poor, young, and religious. Manhattan Jews are rich, old, and more secular. While Brooklyn’s Jewish community is exploding, Manhattan’s is shrinking. And judging in part by the highway billboard, the ascendant Brooklynites have little regard for the declining Manhattanites.